I Read Some Books
I have a chronic but always postponed plan to take a trip across the Atlantic by boat. I chalk this obsession up to an over exposure to various and sundry maritime pageturners. Of these The Sea Wolf is certainly the most pronounced influence, being the only culprit I have read twice in its entirety. Jack London is also to blame via Mutiny on the Elsinore (a very weak book, but he wrote it on the Snark, which I imagine was pretty miserable) and to a marginal extent Martin Eden, which is excellent.
For sea tales actually penned in the 19th century, Melville is probably the most striking with Moby Dick, which everyone should read as an adult. Creepier and now unofficially banned because of its overt racism is Benito Cereno. Typee is worth reading for its insight into European (religious) imperialism in the Pacific, and (provided you get a version with lots of editorial notes) as a nonfiction text on pre-European Pacific island culture in general. In my opinion, esteeming Melville as probably my single favorite author, Typee is a weakly written book, but it's interesting for that very reason, in as far as you get to watch genius finding its feet.
There's a certain amount of masochism involved in reading any of the books mentioned so far, except the Sea Wolf, which is to say they are worthwhile, but inaccessible because of the complexity of language, vis a vis archaic sentence structure, in all its semicoloned pre-Strunk and White byzantinicity. In the same category falls most of Joseph Conrad, in particular with Lord Jim, which is brilliant throughout, but simultaneously interesting AND brilliant for the first hundred pages or so, in which a young person of great potential semi-inadvertently commits an act of cowardice which dominates the remainder of his life. The rest of this book concerns the fallout, and the middle parts are difficult to take at times, plotwise. Poetically it's consistently beautiful. Typhoon is short and a bit sensationalist, but it's still Conrad.
The Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy I hope to read some day, at this point having only finished the first book. The view you get of military discipline on a Cook era sailing vessel is striking. Obviously Bligh is given a somewhat rough treatment, but you learn how much more there was to him than Marlon Brando pacing around in an angry fashion.
Contemporarily speaking, James Clavell's Asian saga is breathtaking in its scope of research and its sheer length. The books, after a few thousand pages, depending on the episode, more or less arbitrarily end, giving you the impression the James just decided to stop writing, finally. That notwithstanding, they are incredibly fascinating, especially Shogun, though Tai-Pan is the most nautical. While the details are fuzzed, the books are more or less historical, in broad strokes terms concerning Western naval infiltration of eastern Asia, as well as in some strange particulars, such as 17th and 18th century personalities who rose to political prominence in Asia. The nonfiction book Samurai William exposits on the true tale of the Dutch man who's story inspired Shogun.
I could wank onward about my autodidactic exploits, but getting back to actual 1st person sailing, today I found this website. I'll just let you look that over.
For sea tales actually penned in the 19th century, Melville is probably the most striking with Moby Dick, which everyone should read as an adult. Creepier and now unofficially banned because of its overt racism is Benito Cereno. Typee is worth reading for its insight into European (religious) imperialism in the Pacific, and (provided you get a version with lots of editorial notes) as a nonfiction text on pre-European Pacific island culture in general. In my opinion, esteeming Melville as probably my single favorite author, Typee is a weakly written book, but it's interesting for that very reason, in as far as you get to watch genius finding its feet.
There's a certain amount of masochism involved in reading any of the books mentioned so far, except the Sea Wolf, which is to say they are worthwhile, but inaccessible because of the complexity of language, vis a vis archaic sentence structure, in all its semicoloned pre-Strunk and White byzantinicity. In the same category falls most of Joseph Conrad, in particular with Lord Jim, which is brilliant throughout, but simultaneously interesting AND brilliant for the first hundred pages or so, in which a young person of great potential semi-inadvertently commits an act of cowardice which dominates the remainder of his life. The rest of this book concerns the fallout, and the middle parts are difficult to take at times, plotwise. Poetically it's consistently beautiful. Typhoon is short and a bit sensationalist, but it's still Conrad.
The Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy I hope to read some day, at this point having only finished the first book. The view you get of military discipline on a Cook era sailing vessel is striking. Obviously Bligh is given a somewhat rough treatment, but you learn how much more there was to him than Marlon Brando pacing around in an angry fashion.
Contemporarily speaking, James Clavell's Asian saga is breathtaking in its scope of research and its sheer length. The books, after a few thousand pages, depending on the episode, more or less arbitrarily end, giving you the impression the James just decided to stop writing, finally. That notwithstanding, they are incredibly fascinating, especially Shogun, though Tai-Pan is the most nautical. While the details are fuzzed, the books are more or less historical, in broad strokes terms concerning Western naval infiltration of eastern Asia, as well as in some strange particulars, such as 17th and 18th century personalities who rose to political prominence in Asia. The nonfiction book Samurai William exposits on the true tale of the Dutch man who's story inspired Shogun.
I could wank onward about my autodidactic exploits, but getting back to actual 1st person sailing, today I found this website. I'll just let you look that over.
posted by sevenfactorial at 6:33 PM
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